Joy

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Maori. Clothing is super important to me. My family has a long relationship to clothing in that my paternal grandmother was a seamstress, and my paternal grandfather was a haberdasher. My maternal grandmother, also a sun in Taurus like me, was an avid shopper. Like a lot of African American folks, it was always important for my family to be “clean” and “cool.” I have been obsessed with clothing and adornment in some regard since I can remember. One of my earliest memories—and this is a bit contested with my mother—is of me announcing, around five years old, that my mother was “fired” and no longer able to pick out my outfits. amb. Precocious. Maori. I also remember keeping a daily journal in second grade at school in which I drew my outfit each day rather than write text. The summer before eighth grade, I got a part-time job just so I could buy clothes. I was overjoyed when I finally turned sixteen and could legally work at the Gap! In high school, for special events like prom or homecoming, I would often sketch out my dream outfit as a kind of vision board, and then I would go out and find it. One of my favorites is from tenth-grade homecoming when I wore a silver slip dress [and] silver platform sneakers and had my hair in bantu knots. That entire outfit had been an idea in my head first. I have been torn in my relationship to clothing, professionally, since high school, always feeling like I was “smart” and should do something that required more analysis or would help people. I am often returning to fashion under secret cover. Immediately after I’d finished my undergraduate BA in history, I applied to a BFA program in fashion design at Otis but then decided not to go. Then, in grad school studying Film, I found myself taking a ton of extracurricular coursework in costume design, and then eventually I pursued a second MFA in costume design at CalArts (which I also didn’t finish). My close friends know I’m obsessed, and I have a lovely collection of exhibition catalogs from museum fashion shows—which are my favorite kind of show. Have I answered this question? amb. Yes, beautifully! You know, you changed my relationship to clothes. I feel like I’d flailed about in the hit-or-miss realm for many years, certain there was nothing out there for me due to my size. Now I get dressed in what I think of as happy style, adorning myself until I feel joy. You told me things like accessorize to really show my personality, have high-quality basics that I felt great in, and great shoes, great boots. Can you share with readers some of the guidelines you offer for constructing a wardrobe that thrills and delights the wearer and the world? Maori. That means a lot for you to say. I remember well our conversations around getting dressed. I always feel joy when I see you.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  The day we got back from Mara, Auma and I received word that Roy had arrived, a week earlier than expected. He had suddenly appeared in Kariakor with a suitcase in hand, saying that he’d felt restless waiting around in D.C. and had managed to talk his way onto an earlier flight. The family was thrilled by his arrival and had held off on a big feast only until Auma and I returned. Bernard, who brought us the news, said that we were expected soon; he fidgeted as he spoke, as if every minute away from our eldest brother were a dereliction of duty. But Auma, still stiff from sleeping in tents for the past two days, insisted on taking the time for a bath. “Don’t worry,” she said to Bernard. “Roy just likes to make everything seem so dramatic.” Jane’s apartment was in a hubbub when we arrived. In the kitchen, the women were cleaning collards and yams, chopping chicken and stirring ugali. In the living room, younger children set the table or served sodas to the adults. And at the center of this rush sat Roy, his legs spread out in front of him, his arms flung along the back of the sofa, nodding with approval. He waved us over and offered us each a hug. Auma, who hadn’t seen Roy since he’d moved to the States, stepped back to get a better look. “You’ve become so fat!” she said. “Fat, eh?” Roy laughed. “A man needs a man-sized appetite.” He turned toward the kitchen. “Which reminds me … where’s that other beer?” No sooner had the words fallen from his mouth than Kezia came up with a beer in hand, smiling happily. “Barry,” she said in English, “this is the eldest son. Head of the family.” Another woman whom I had never seen before, plump and heavy-breasted, with bright red lipstick, sidled up beside Roy and put her arm around him. Kezia’s smile subsided, and she drifted back into the kitchen. “Baby,” the woman said to Roy, “do you have the cigarettes?” “Yeah, hold on ….” Roy patted his shirt pockets carefully. “Have you met my brother, Barack? Barack, this is Amy. And you remember Auma.” Roy found the cigarettes and lit one for Amy. Amy took a long drag and leaned forward toward Auma, exhaling round puffs of smoke as she spoke. “Of course I remember Auma. How are you? Let me tell you, you look wonderful! And I like what you’ve done to your hair. Really, it’s so … natural!”

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  To Mochi, my little Siamese cat. No one brings me more peace and happiness than you do. There is nothing like a girl and her cat, and I think we make quite the duo. You will always be my first baby. To my son, Derek—it’s wild to me that I’m writing those words. As I type this with you in my belly at thirty-three weeks pregnant, I have never been more excited to meet a person in my life. I can’t believe that I get to be your mom, and I know you are going to change my heart in ways I can’t even fathom. Something tells me that this will be the best adventure yet. See you soon, earth- side, my little love. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr. Lauren Cook is a licensed clinical psychologist, keynote speaker, and company consultant. She loves speaking around the country to help create more mentally healthy workplaces and schools. Dr. Cook owns a private practice, Heartship Psychological Services, where she serves individual adults, teens, and couples. Dr. Cook completed her doctorate in clinical psychology from Pepperdine University and has her master’s in marriage and family therapy from the University of Southern California. She has been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, Bustle, and Medium, among other outlets. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, and Siamese cat. To bring Dr. Lauren to your team, visit www.drlaurencook.com. Follow Dr. Lauren on Instagram and Tik Tok at @Dr.LaurenCook. ENDNOTES 1. Side note: In case you’re team James Cameron here and you’re about to say that the doorframe wasn’t buoyant enough for the two of them, I’m proud/ashamed to admit how much time I spent researching this very argument. It turns out that Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage of MythBusters tested out this famous scene that has now grown quite contested. What they found is that if Rose had placed her life jacket under the doorframe, it would in fact have been buoyant enough to support both her and Jack. But honestly, who would think to do that when they’re suffering from hypothermia and in the wake of a traumatic experience? 2. “Suicide Statistics,” American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/. 3. “Opioid facts and statistics,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, December 16, 2022, https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/statistics/index.html. 4. “Marriage and Divorce,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, March 25, 2022, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/marriage-divorce.htm. 5. H. H. Lai, A. Rawal, B. Shen, and J. Vetter, “The Relationship Between Anxiety and Overactive Bladder or Urinary Incontinence Symptoms in the Clinical Population,” Urology 98 (July 2016): 50–57, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.urology.2016.07.013. 6. “How Much of the Ocean Have We Explored?,” National Ocean Service, February 26, 2021, https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/exploration.html#:~:text=Throughout%20history%2C%20the%20ocean%20has,unmapped%2C%20unobserved%2C%20and%20unexplored 7. “Ocean,” National Geographic, May 19, 2022, https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/ocean. 8. M. F. Glasser and D. C. Van Essen, “Mapping Human Cortical Areas In Vivo Based on Myelin Content as Revealed by T1-and T2-Weighted MRI,” Journal of Neuroscience 31, no. 32 (2011): 11597–616, https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2180-11.2011. 9. R. C. Kessler, N. A. Sampson, P.

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  I wanted to reconnect her with her joy—something I feared she had lost somewhere long ago in her childhood. As anxiety often drives us to do, we grow up too quickly and leave behind the folly and the fun because it feels frivolous. It lacks purpose. And that’s exactly why we need it even more. Maybe you too have staved off your joy. We don’t allow for the vulnerability of laughter or heartfelt tears because we believe it leaves us defenseless. We see expression of emotion as weakness instead of a moment of connection. We’ve internalized that adults don’t goof off, cry, or laugh (unless we’re inebriated and therefore less likely to worry about inhibitions). I know that most of us want to reconnect to our joy, though. Part of why nostalgia is so powerful is because it feels like one of the few vessels through which we can tap back into that childlike wonder we miss. It’s why we love watching babies, because they unabashedly have permission to do all the things we wish we could do—laugh, cry, play—without judgment. What if you allowed yourself to loosen the grip, though? What if you didn’t judge yourself for laughing so hard that people turned around because they heard you? What if you danced at a wedding and others noticed you? What if? What if? What if? And to that I say, “So what. So what. So what.” Your anxiety doesn’t need to have a death grip on your joy. Let yourself love what you love without putting parameters on it. LET’S TAKE AN OPPORTUNITY TO DEFINE SOME OF THE WAYS THAT YOU COULD INCORPORATE MORE PLAY INTO YOUR LIFE. TELL ME, WHAT SPARKS YOUR CHILDLIKE JOY? Come back to play. Find those things that you loved to do as a child and rediscover them. Find new things that spark your interest and get lost in them. Not everything needs to be done for productivity’s sake. Not everything needs to have a purpose. Get lost in time and just enjoy something for the pure sake of enjoyment. When you can be free to live out your joy, your anxiety won’t have such a stronghold on your life. Yes, you may still feel anxious sometimes when you’re trying something new. The key is that you’re not letting your anxiety stop you altogether. You’re coming back to that little kid inside who just wants to play. CHAPTER EIGHT SUPPORTING YOUR FELLOW SURFERS FROM AFAR Sometimes you can tell a client hasn’t slept well in a few days. With Jessie, it looked as if she hadn’t slept in a few weeks.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Alana. I love good music, especially really good lyrics. I love to see live music, theater, performance art. I love film. Historically, I love literature, but reading isn’t as accessible to me these days. I love sharing an amazing meal and good conversation with friends. I love sex. I love obsessing about really random things. I love admiring the moon in all its phases. I love making people laugh. amb. This may be too personal, in which case, tell me shut up … but I feel so aware of how Malkia looks at you and sees your beauty and sensuality every single day, allowing everyone else to see you through that lens. It feels like that would be good medicine as your body goes through the challenges of cancer. Is that the case? Alana. Mac makes me feel like a sexy beast, no matter what. Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I don’t. It reminds me of my humanity as I manage cancer. It helps me have more compassion and love for myself and others. It makes me feel like a superhero, honestly. amb. Have you read Audre Lorde’s cancer writings? She also seemed to share this commitment to pleasure through transition, and I wonder if she has influenced or encouraged you from the ancestral realm? Alana. I read her Cancer Journals a few months after my diagnosis.85 What struck me the most from it was her commitment to doing whatever it would take to continue her life’s work. I honestly found it to be difficult to relate to—I’m someone who has always struggled with understanding my purpose. Part of me hoped that maybe this cancer diagnosis would activate some secret purpose-filled part of me that was sitting dormant, but that hasn’t really happened. What has happened is that I’ve started a blog and am working on a documentary, and I grow my love for Mac every day. So, in a way, I’ve been able to rekindle some creativity that hasn’t had much attention in many, many years. That feels connected to Audre in some way. amb. What do you wish everyone understood about pleasure? Alana. I think we are on earth, in these humanly bodies, to experience pleasure—among other things. I also do believe the saying “everything in moderation,” with the emphasis on the word “everything.” And, finally, I believe in pleasure as a practice. You can fall out of practice, but life is so much better when you’re exercising your pleasure muscles. 83 Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake (New York: Putnam, 1997), 219.84 Mac is Malkia Cyril, director of the Center for Media Justice and lover extraordinaire.85 Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1980).Care as PleasureLeah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a prolific writer and teacher in the realm of disability justice and care work. Every time we talk she changes something in my foundational sense of myself. When I think of care and pleasure I think of:

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  I want there to be a diversity of care tactics. And I want everyone to be able to create wildly intimate, healing relationships where your care needs are present in the room, not crammed in the garbage. I want everyone to have access to this joyful, dangerous, wide-open pleasure, because it’s the vulnerable strength we all deserve. 86 BIPOC: Black, Indigenous and People of Color.Sub-section: The Politics of Wholeness in MovementsTomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone, who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy. —Audre Lorde, “A Burst of Light,” 1988 The Pleasure of Living at the Same Time as Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-CarterIt took years for me to integrate my love of Octavia Butler into the rest of my life—to recognize that my love of her writing and imagination wasn’t a pastime but a future. My love of Beyoncé brings me a similar kind of immense pleasure that actually enhances my wholeness and opens possibilities.87 They are both Black women who shape/d the narratives that held them, and the world around them, though in most ways Beyoncé couldn’t be more different from Octavia. Octavia was awkward whereas Beyoncé is diva, Octavia was private whereas Beyoncé makes most of her work about her intimate relationships, Octavia was delightfully contrarian whereas Beyoncé is, in her own words on Everything Is Love, “everybody type.”88 Beyoncé and I are both Texan-born Virgos with Scorpio moons and Venus in Libra. But that’s where our overlaps end—she is Beyoncé. She’s the queen my anarchic heart continues to choose. I choose her because she works so hard, and she is willing to learn in public, to politicize without rigidity, to exert her will on the public square. Beyoncé is a mama to three children, and we get to see her with them, weaving them, and her husband, into the grand art production of her life. She is a prolific creative force focused on her own transformation, on transcending ceilings and barriers. A pop queen, a culture queen, Beyoncé’s primary public function is to dazzle us with talent. She only has power because we love her. Claiming her publicly, in a way, was a key step in the process of coming out as a pleasure activist. My comrade Karissa Lewis recently reminded me of a moment, at a gathering of Black organizers, the morning after Beyoncé dropped her self-titled album. I stood in front of people I respected and let it show that I was beside myself for this Black woman—and I felt like everyone else should be paying attention to her as well. I knew I liked Beyoncé back in the Destiny’s Child days, but my respect and eventually love grew as she did. I began to appreciate how meticulous she is, how hard she holds and raises her standards, how each of her massive pieces of work is distinct from the last, how she stays learning and innovating, transforming in public.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Really, Nance, sometimes - sometimes I think you must’ve been born quite grown - like Venus in the sea-shell, in the painting ...’She put a finger to the side of her glass, to catch a trickle of sugary rum; then put the finger to her lip. I felt my throat grow even thicker, and my heart give a strange kind of lurch. Then I sniffed, and gazed again at the trousered toms beside the billiard-table.‘To think,’ I said after a second, ‘that I might have worn my moleskins, after all ...’ Florence laughed.We sat sipping at our rums a little longer; more women arrived, and the room became hotter and noisier and thick with smoke. I went to the bar to have our glasses re-filled, and when I walked with them back to our stall I found Annie there, with Ruth and Nora and another girl, a fair-haired, pretty girl, who was introduced to me as Miss Raymond. ‘Miss Raymond works in a print-shop,’ said Annie, and I had to pretend surprise to hear it. When, after half-an-hour or so, she went off to find the lavatory, Annie made us rearrange our places so that she might sit next to her.‘Quick, quick!’ she cried. ‘She’ll be back in a moment! Nancy, over there!’ I found myself placed between Florence and the wall; and for lovely long moments at a time I let the other women talk, and savoured the press of her damson thigh against my own more sober, more slender one. Every time she turned to me I felt her breath upon my cheek, hot and sugary and scented with rum.The evening passed: I began to think that I had never spent a pleasanter one. I gazed at Ruth and Nora, and saw them lean together and laugh. I looked at Annie: she had her hand upon Miss Raymond’s shoulder, her eyes upon her face. I looked at Florence, and she smiled. ‘All right, Venus?’ she said. Her hair had sprung right out of its pins, and was curling about her collar.Then Nora began one of those earnest stories — ‘This girl came into the office today, listen to this ...’ — and I yawned, and looked away from her, towards the billiard players; and was very surprised to find the knot of women there all turned away from their table, and gazing at me. They seemed to be debating me - one nodded, another shook her head, yet another squinted at me, and thumped her billiard cue upon the floor emphatically. I began to grow a little uncomfortable: perhaps - who knew? - I had breached some tommish etiquette, coming here in short hair and a skirt. I looked away; and when I looked again, one of the women had disentangled herself from her neighbours, and was stepping purposefully towards our stall.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  2. Orgasmic meditation. This was a more recent practice connected to self-love. I went to a meeting of an unrelated group in a space in San Francisco that focused on orgasmic meditation, among other things. I remember being in the space and sort of on edge. It is not unusual to end up in a room in California where people are talking openly about sex and even having it with each other, but I felt young and flustered by the idea of a room full of people bringing each other to orgasm and very glad my meeting had nothing to do with that.7 But the idea stayed in my head, and a couple years ago I came across it again in my random explorations of the entire internet. I watched a few videos where folks explained the method: stroking the upper left quadrant of the clitoris to bring a person to orgasm. The focus on just that one place, following the breath patterns and emotional process of the recipient, and the power of the orgasm as a form of meditation and spiritual practice—all of it was fairly titillating to me. By this time, though, I was thousands of miles from San Francisco, with no one around I felt comfortable asking to stroke me just so without, you know, making it a whole thing. So I decided to see what happened if I just did it for myself. I did a fifteen-minute practice every morning before anything else in my day for a few months. What I experienced was that every one of my orgasms had a different emotional flavor, like an experiential snowflake. And that I didn’t always need to reach an orgasm in that fifteen minutes—sometimes not releasing yielded a more energized day. Starting my day with this practice made everything else go better, feel lighter and healthier, and generally increased my personal and interpersonal joy. I have still never attended their classes or done it with a group … we’ll see. But as a solo practice, I return to this one if ever I feel I am in a funk. 3. Self-pornography. This is also an extension of the self-love practice but has a lot of its own specifications. I don’t fit the standard for American pornography or American desire. I have traveled to other places where I have been celebrated immediately for my size and shape, my color. But not so in the U.S. Most pornography here offers the choice of brunettes, redheads, or blondes, or the “exotic” options of Asian or Black women, all having sex with white men, or, for lesbian porn, white women. Or in really freaky stuff, Black men. Perhaps you can feel the yawn in that sentence, pardon me.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  It will take years, two decades, for you to become sober, to learn to meditate, to be able to just be. Alone. With yourself. To cross the threshold from loneliness to solitude. To learn that love is abundant but compatibility is rare. To learn there is a difference between hedonism that enables dissociation and disconnection versus joy and pleasure that enable presence and intimacy. You are here: college. The finish line of your childhood. But it is only the beginning of the rest of your life. 82 V. C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979); V. C. Andrews, Heaven (New York: Pocket Books, 1990).Fuck CancerA Conversation with Alana Devich Cyril [image file=image_rsrc3KW.jpg] I met Alana Devich Cyril through her beloved Malkia Devich Cyril, who I have been comrades with for years. I fell in love with Alana as Malkia did, as the couple shared pictures from Hawaii vacations and Kendrick Lamar rap-offs. When Alana was diagnosed with late-stage cancer, I became part of the larger community in the world that is holding the couple as they grab life and love one day at a time. Alana is clever, hilarious, honest, and incredibly brave. She directed a documentary called My Life, Interrupted, about her dance with cancer. amb. What was your relationship to pleasure before your cancer diagnosis? Alana. There’s a Kurt Vonnegut quote that captures it for me: “We’re here on earth to fart around and don’t let anyone tell you different.”83 Before my cancer diagnosis, I always liked to describe myself as a bon vivant. I really took great pleasure in delighting in things—food, drinks, art, sex, people, places, all of it. If I was pressed to identify my purpose in life, I thought maybe it was to enjoy things. amb. It seems like as soon as you learned you had cancer, you also began strategizing and practicing pleasure in so many ways. But I know that might just be perception. How soon after your diagnosis did you get conscious of needing/cultivating pleasure? Alana. When I was first diagnosed, I was also really sick. I was sleeping most of the day and couldn’t swallow anything that wasn’t puréed. So there was an element of just doing what I needed to do to get through each day. After the first couple rounds of chemo I started to feel a lot better, and I remember trying desperately to do things that I would enjoy, despite still being pretty sick. I remember stubbornly making Mac invite a group of friends to the Exploratorium After Dark night while I was on chemo.84 My friends kept checking in to make sure I’d be up for it and then I couldn’t leave the apartment because of some unfortunate chemo-related pooping. My friends were good sports about it—they all came over, and we had an impromptu party at home. Then I pooped so much I broke the toilet, and we had to call a plumber. Poop party extravaganza!

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  The glitter cannons at the corners of the dance floor shot off, and the shirtless men who’d already looked like fitness models suddenly shone with blue and pink and green glitter. It stuck to their sweat, defined their shoulders. “That one,” Charlie said, pointing at a luminescent dancer. “Give that man your number now.” Even as Yale had wanted nothing right then but to be alone with Charlie, he’d taken huge delight in the idea of the Bistro. There had been one real gay bar in Ann Arbor, but nothing like this, not a gay disco, not a space where everyone was so happy. The place in Ann Arbor had been filthy, with a sad jukebox and windows full of dying geraniums meant to obstruct the view from the street. There’d always been a skulking vibe, a sense that any happiness was somehow stolen. Here the music blasted and there were three bars and a pair of neon lips and multiple mirror balls. The excess of the place felt exultant. There wasn’t as much on Halsted, five years back—bars were just starting to pop up; people were just starting to move there; and Boystown (no one had even called it that yet) was just starting to coalesce—and so this place, way down by the river, was where Yale first fell in love with the city. At the Bistro, Yale felt entitled to joy. Even if he was just watching from the wall, drink in hand. This, the Bistro announced, was a town where good things would happen. Chicago would unfurl its map to him one promising street, one intoxicating space, at a time. It would weave him into its grid, pour beer in his mouth and music in his ears. It would keep him. The relationship grew serious that fall—drunk, Yale whispered into Charlie’s ear that he was in love, and Charlie whispered back, “I need you to mean that,” and things progressed from there—and for about a year, Charlie worried aloud that Yale hadn’t experienced the city’s freedoms, hadn’t been with enough men, and that one day he’d wake up and decide he needed to live some more. Charlie would say, “You’re going to look back on this and wonder why you wasted your youth.” Yale was twenty-six then, and Charlie somehow imagined their age gap to be practically generational even though he only had five years on Yale. But Charlie had started alarmingly young, in London. Yale was still figuring himself out sophomore year at Michigan. Eventually things settled. Yale was suited to relationships, to the point that Teddy thought it was great fun to call him a lesbian, to ask how life on the commune was going. He’d stayed with each of his first two lovers for a year. He hated drama—hated not only the endings of things but the bumpy beginnings as well, the self-doubt, the nervousness.

• From The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (2015)

  One by one these stories presented themselves to me as the chronicle of a Native American holy man making his vision quests through the course of his lifetime. Each one was different, but each one followed the same sacred pattern of the traditional Native quest, as if the gospel had been written by a Native American author. Jesus was the Messiah of Native America. For me, this was a deep healing. I found many other parts of Native American theology emerging from my reading that afternoon, not only the four vision quests, but other events and characters in the narrative that took on a Native American reality. In the rest of this book I will try to share some thoughts about the four vision quests of Jesus, but before I do, I want to consider the aftermath of this moment of revelation. The experience I had of the voice while sitting quietly reading the Christian scriptures was the moment when what the crow had told me actually happened – the two paths became one. The purpose of the vision quest in Native American culture is not to give one person a private audience with God. It is a tool of transformation, a way to help every person become a more spiritually skilled member of the community. By taking my vision with me into the Dakotas, by trusting what the crow had told me and following the twin paths of my life, I had allowed the vision to become a deeper part of me. I continued my quest because I was alert to the lessons I could learn among Native people. I listened. I learned. I lived. Then the message of the crow was ready to be fulfilled. And yet, in keeping with the nature of the vision quest, the fulfillment was not an end in itself. I had my “eureka” moment, but it was a beginning, not an end. Once I realized that there were four vision quests in the New Testament, the pull of this idea accelerated my desire to learn more. It opened up the Bible to me in a new way. It brought me to a new path of scholarship and service. Only a short while after my discovery, a few of the Lakota elders came to tell me that they thought I should get ordained. They told me that they had been watching me since I had come to live in their community; they had seen how I tried to live; they believed it was time for me to take the step to become a priest. This affirmation came right after the healing I felt when I began to understand the Christian message as an integral part of Native tradition. Up until that point, I had said I would not be ordained because I was too divided in my spirit. Now, the voice had healed me.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  These are a few examples of the many joyful intersections of disability justice, care, and pleasure that I’m really fucking lucky to have in my life. But I know that for most people, the words “care” and “pleasure” can’t even be in the same sentence. We’re all soaking in ableism’s hatred of bodies that have needs, and we’re given a really shitty choice: either have no needs and get to have autonomy, dignity, and control over your life, or admit you need care and lose all of the above. Also in the mix is the fact that some of us come from immigrant, Black, and brown communities and have worked shitty, badly paid caregiving jobs for years, which hasn’t made giving or receiving care uncomplicated. Many of us have been taught that needing care is a weakness we cannot afford and have survived through needing absolutely nothing. A lot of our communities still look down on disability or mental health as weakness and stigma, and we know that if we show ours, we can lose a lot—dates, credibility, social capital, jobs, kids. It’s no wonder I’ve heard many friends say, “I could never show my partner(s) that disability, illness, mental health thing, it’s not sexy, it’s too embarrassing.” For my part, I spent decades curating myself so only my “normal” parts showed—on dates, in the social world—and never showed anyone my damn care needs. I did it because it was the best way I knew to survive. But it also made me deeply believe that those parts were disgusting and unlovable, which meant that I was too. For much of the past decade, I have been part of a disability justice community whose members have dreamed new ways of creating and accepting care as a pleasure, not a chore, and experimented with creating joyful spaces where we care for each other as queer, disabled people of color. I’m proud of the work we’ve done and the impact it has had. I also want to complicate it. There can be nothing more badass than a bunch of crips loving and caring for each other. And: community isn’t utopia, we can fuck each other over or just be too exhausted or mad to be there, and some of us don’t have community at all. Care isn’t always orgasmically pleasurable: people need to be able to get what we need and go to the bathroom whether or not it feels like a dance party. I’ve heard plenty of folks who work with personal care attendants say that they don’t want their care workers to be friends—they want them to be professionals who get paid well and treat them right, where there are labor laws and mutual respect.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  The summer your mother finally has the police remove your father from your home and files for divorce is the summer he beats her and threatens her life on a daily basis, is the summer you are as usual away, is the summer you get your first kiss. His name is Derek, and he is a white boy from Parma Heights, Ohio, a west-side suburb of Cleveland where your grandmother lives. Your summertime best friend Marlena is dating Derek’s cousin—she’s been dating a string of boys since you were in middle school. She thinks you’re getting a bit old to have never been kissed, and you agree. You hate being left behind. Soon after, you can’t remember what Derek looked like, but you do know you weren’t attracted to him, and you remember how smug he was because he was a very experienced kisser. You clearly recall how satisfying it felt to give him honest feedback when he asked, “How was it?” and you answered, “I didn’t like it: too wet, and you shoved your tongue at me. I don’t think you know what you’re doing.” You are fifteen years old. The next summer, your grandmother helps your mother pay for an ostentatious sweet sixteen party. (When you think about it now, it seems modest, but at the time it was more than you’ve ever spent on a party, ever.) Your mother rents the local Lions Club hall with wood paneling and orders catered food and a two-tiered custom-made birthday cake. She even hires a DJ, some dude from the local Indian community who does weddings and birthdays and anniversary parties. There are table cloths and balloons and centerpieces and a disco ball and metallic streamers dangling from the ceiling. You get your hair cut into a bob, buy a short black dress from the post-prom discount rack, and dance all night in stockinged feet. You smell like rose oil from the Body Shop. While doing the Electric Slide in this room full of fifty people who have come to celebrate you, you feel a flash of what might be genuine happiness. It is fleeting. But it is there.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  amb. I am selfishly glad you didn’t, because you are bringing such glamour and style into the realms I live in, which need it. 104 Marie Kondo is the author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (Ten Speed Press, 2014).Adornment and BurlesqueA Conversation with Taja Lindley Taja Lindley is a multimedia performer—she first caught my eye as half of the comedy rap duo Colored Girls Hustle. I bought all their swag because it was aesthetically perfect. The next time I came across her work, it was burlesque and theater. I get very excited by Black women living as radical pleasure artists and was excited to learn more. amb. Taja, tell me about all the pleasures that you cultivate and generate in your life. Taja. I made a commitment about six years ago that I was gonna allow joy to be my compass, that I was literally going to allow it to direct me where I should go and wanted to go. In 2011, I was working a movement job, and it just wasn’t satisfying for me any longer. Now I have an articulation around healing justice and what tools we probably could’ve used to support that internal infrastructure and interpersonal relationship work, but at the time I didn’t. And I was simultaneously discovering my creativity. When I look back on my life, I realize that I’ve been an artist my whole life, but I didn’t really claim that for myself until around 2011, when I started being more intentional about my creativity. So carving out time for it, committing to it, putting it in a calendar, like really holding boundary and space for it in my schedule and in my life. And actually, my creativity was the thing that burst my life wide open, that just did that thing that Audre Lorde talks about regarding the erotic. I just wasn’t satisfied with mediocre experiences in my life. I wasn’t satisfied with being places and doing things that I didn’t like to do, and while a part of me felt a little selfish, because a lot of our movement work can be based on this idea of sacrifice, I just kind of resolved for myself that I would find the intersections that worked well for me between my creativity and my commitment to my people. I quit my job and had some resources to be creative with all my time. And I spent a lot of time healing myself, engaging in practices that felt good to me: meditating, doing The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, journaling, going on artist dates.105 Around this time, Colored Girls Hustle, which is my small business, was just a baby. She still feels like a baby, but she was literally still being birthed, and I really committed myself to leveling up with her. So I came out with a collection of jewelry and began to articulate the ways in which adornment means something to me.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  It will take years, two decades, for you to become sober, to learn to meditate, to be able to just be. Alone. With yourself. To cross the threshold from loneliness to solitude. To learn that love is abundant but compatibility is rare. To learn there is a difference between hedonism that enables dissociation and disconnection versus joy and pleasure that enable presence and intimacy. You are here: college. The finish line of your childhood. But it is only the beginning of the rest of your life. 82 V. C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979); V. C. Andrews, Heaven (New York: Pocket Books, 1990).Fuck CancerA Conversation with Alana Devich Cyril [image file=image_rsrc3KW.jpg] I met Alana Devich Cyril through her beloved Malkia Devich Cyril, who I have been comrades with for years. I fell in love with Alana as Malkia did, as the couple shared pictures from Hawaii vacations and Kendrick Lamar rap-offs. When Alana was diagnosed with late-stage cancer, I became part of the larger community in the world that is holding the couple as they grab life and love one day at a time. Alana is clever, hilarious, honest, and incredibly brave. She directed a documentary called My Life, Interrupted, about her dance with cancer. amb. What was your relationship to pleasure before your cancer diagnosis? Alana. There’s a Kurt Vonnegut quote that captures it for me: “We’re here on earth to fart around and don’t let anyone tell you different.”83 Before my cancer diagnosis, I always liked to describe myself as a bon vivant. I really took great pleasure in delighting in things—food, drinks, art, sex, people, places, all of it. If I was pressed to identify my purpose in life, I thought maybe it was to enjoy things. amb. It seems like as soon as you learned you had cancer, you also began strategizing and practicing pleasure in so many ways. But I know that might just be perception. How soon after your diagnosis did you get conscious of needing/cultivating pleasure? Alana. When I was first diagnosed, I was also really sick. I was sleeping most of the day and couldn’t swallow anything that wasn’t puréed. So there was an element of just doing what I needed to do to get through each day. After the first couple rounds of chemo I started to feel a lot better, and I remember trying desperately to do things that I would enjoy, despite still being pretty sick. I remember stubbornly making Mac invite a group of friends to the Exploratorium After Dark night while I was on chemo.84 My friends kept checking in to make sure I’d be up for it and then I couldn’t leave the apartment because of some unfortunate chemo-related pooping. My friends were good sports about it—they all came over, and we had an impromptu party at home. Then I pooped so much I broke the toilet, and we had to call a plumber. Poop party extravaganza!

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Me and my partner hanging out in bed during a “bed day,” constantly communicating about what hurts and what positions our bodies need to be in, offering to make each other tea or bringing over the chips. Spooning, reading, telling stories, making out and napping, in the middle of a massive pillow pile. We aren’t trying to cram ourselves into an able-bodied vision of what sexy or a relationship is; it’s totally okay for us to rest, chill, care for ourselves and each other. Our care needs are not some gross secret walled off from date night. Or my friend whose multi-decade-old disability care collective helps her get on the toilet, shower, and dress every day, and people laugh, gossip, hang out, and have a great time—it’s the place to be! When I show a video that she made about her collective to the care webs workshop I teach, there’s usually awed silence. Afterward, someone always says, “I’ve never seen someone be so joyful and unashamed while getting help getting on the toilet.” Or last weekend, when two disabled femme BIPOC friends and I went on an accessible hike and had a blast.86 The care that allowed this joyful-ass space to happen included everything from one friend getting a guidebook of accessible hikes and researching routes, to the ways we strategized together when all of a sudden the trail had no curb cuts, to our stopping every five minutes to take a breath (because one of us has lung tumors and one of us was using a manual wheelchair that day and I have asthma), to how my friends were chill when I got hit with sudden food poisoning and had to squat behind a not-so-private tree and have a really bad shit as bikes whizzed by. “This is where access intimacy gets real!” I yelled, and we all laughed.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Michi, aka sister selva, the 2015 Queen of the Texas Burlesque Festival and winner of the Thursday Audience Choice Award, has spread her seedlings all over the stages of New York City—from Joe’s Pub, to CIUSA, (Le) Poisson Rouge, the Joyce Theater, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Sesame Street, and all over the blocks, avenues, and impassioned dance floors. A student of acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine, she loves exploring the many branches of healing that are rooted in self-love, community love, and justice for all people, creatures, and Mother Nature herself. The sisters were asked to write about radical burlesque as a tool for liberation and working together as sisters. But they weren’t at all sure how to functionally write together (sisters!), so instead they just sat down and had a conversation about these topics. Sister/Sister on Burlesque Una. Why do we do burlesque/how is it liberatory? Okay, I want to start off our convo by answering the question I just asked. Both. Haha. Una. We know the road to liberation for all peoples is a long one and something we might not see in our lifetimes. I feel like burlesque creates moments of liberation, moments of experience. Burlesque gives us space to feel all emotions and to recharge together, in our bodies together, not just online but viscerally together. It’s about finding freedom onstage, in my own body, while others watch and experience. It’s not just about rehearsing the revolution, it’s about creating cracks that show our bodies that we can experience freedom, we do. Sometimes that happens while we’re onstage, sometimes it happens while we’re dancing on the dance floor, no one else looking but us. These moments and experiences can be public or private, or private in a public setting, but more important is that they happen. For us to be fully present in our bodies, where we want nothing else but to be right there letting the divine speak through and of us. Where we want nothing of the audience but to witness and hope/know that their own freedom is wrapped in ours and the freer we each are, the more present and fully embodied we are to work for our collective liberation, toppling down borders, prisons, and all other systems that cause violence and keep our people from being free. All while we take off our clothes, showing some titties, ass, and armpit hair. Michi. Yeah! I feel like, in general, what we are doing when we are creating is envisioning or practicing for the world we want. So to have those moments on stage where we and the audience are living in, inhabiting a different world, where that is our reality, gives us a physical memory of it to be able to have the strength to keep working for it, for the world we want to live in.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  41 Trans women of color in the US have an unemployment rate of four times the average, and about half of TWOC in the US have worked in the sex industry. See Human Rights Campaign and Trans People of Color Coalition, “Addressing Anti-Transgender Violence: Exploring Realities, Challenges and Solutions for Policymakers and Community Advocates,” November 2015, https://assets2.hrc.org/files/assets/resources/HRC-AntiTransgenderViolence-0519.pdf?_ga=2.37418594.399382019.1536798503-1304962530.1536798503.42 Roxane Gay, Hunger (New York: Harper Collins, 2017), 188–89.43 Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, Bridesmaids, directed by Paul Feig (Universal City, CA: Universal Films, 2011).44 Based on British legal tradition, marital rape was explicitly exempted from sexual assault legislation in the US until the 1980s. Some laws remained on the books until the 1990s. Data drawn from Kathleen Basile, “Prevalence of Wife Rape and Other Intimate Partner Sexual Coercion in a Nationally Representative Sample of Women,” Violence Victims 17, no. 5 (2002): 511–24; Elaine K. Martin, Casey T. Taft, and Patricia A. Resick, “A Review of Marital Rape,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 12, no. 3 (2007): 329–47; Patricia Mahoney and Linda M. Williams, “Sexual Assault in Marriage: Prevalence, Consequences and Treatment of Wife Rape,” in Partner Violence: A Comprehensive Review of 20 Years of Research, ed. J. L. Jasinski and L. M. Williams (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998), 113–62; and Kathleen Basile, “Rape by Acquiescence: The Ways in Which Women ‘Give in’ to Unwanted Sex with Their Husbands,” Violence against Women 5, no. 9 (1999): 1036–58.45 That is, all labor is “embodied” labor. Or as Marx put it, labor power is the collection of “mental and physical capabilities existing in the physical form, the living personality, of a human being.” Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (Toronto: Penguin Books, 1990), 270.46 Anne Elizabeth Moore, Threadbare: Clothes, Sex and Trafficking (Portland: Microcosm Publishing, 2015).47 Ritu Mahajan, “The Naked Truth: Appearance Discrimination, Employment, and the Law,” Asian American Law Journal 14 (2007): 165–203.48 Sexual harassment of women retail workers ranges from 25 percent to nearly 70 percent. See Laura Good and Rae Cooper, “‘But It’s Your Job to Be Friendly’: Employees Coping with and Contesting Sexual Harassment from Customers in the Service Sector,” Gender, Work and Organization 23 no. 5 (2016): 447–69.49 Pulma Sumac, “A Disgrace Reserved for Prostitutes: Complicity and the Beloved Community,” Lies: A Journal of Materialist Feminism 2 (2015): 13.50 Jacqueline Frances, Striptastic! A Celebration of Dope-ass Cunts Who Love Money (self-published, 2017).A Timeline/Tutorial on SquirtingThis is another piece that my feminist heart says should be a common conversation. I am tired of old narratives that don’t acknowledge that the majority of the human species, regardless of gender, ejaculate. The first time was an accident, being fucked from behind I suddenly felt I would come apart and then something was loose in me, something was on my thighs, something covered the bed beneath me, tears with the intensity of grief or joy on my cheeks. I hoped he wouldn’t notice, but he did, and he seemed confused and pleased. No one had told us this could happen.

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  Nicolette looked back and forth between them as if a great joke were being played, as if they’d told her one was the Easter Bunny and the other was the Tooth Fairy. “Your mama came out of my tummy, and your daddy came out of Cecily’s tummy.” “Show me,” Nicolette said, and Fiona lifted up her sweater and pointed at the pale line of scar. “Right there,” she said, and Nicolette nodded. “But it didn’t ouch?” Nicolette asked. “Not a bit.” Nicolette chewed her cracker, and Cecily said to Fiona, “I don’t know if this is helpful, but whenever I felt guilty about something when I was young, my mother would say, “How do you make up for it? What’s a thing you could do that would make you feel better?” It sounds like Mr. Rogers, I know, but it’s always grounded me when I’m upset.” “I could move to Paris,” Fiona said, and she was joking until she heard it and realized she wasn’t. Nicolette wanted her books now. Cecily pulled her onto her lap and read to her about Pénélope, about the game she and her animal friends played with their trunk of colored clothes. F 1991 iona was waiting for them right inside the Brigg’s front door. She said, “Rescue me from my family!” “Help us first,” Cecily said. There was a ramp, but the rubber strip right in the doorway was catching Yale’s wheels, and so Cecily had to rock him back while Fiona grabbed the armrests and pulled forward, and Yale held tight and tried to lean back so he wouldn’t fall forward when they put him down again. The landing jarred him, knocked the oxygen tank into his spine. But they were in. Fiona helped him pull his coat off. Cecily said, “We have exactly one hour.” “I actually have two hours of oxygen,” Yale said. “She’s being conservative.” “Well she’s right!” Fiona said. “What if there’s a traffic jam on the way back? I can’t believe they let you out.” “For the record,” Yale said as they wheeled him down the hall toward the gallery, “if you’re ever questioned in a court of law, they did not let me out, and Dr. Cheng definitely did not help us steal the oxygen or the chair.” “Of course not.” “He says hi.” — The gallery was already full. Yale was vastly underdressed—every other man wore a tie, and he wore an old sweater that used to fit snugly and now hung like a tent—but his clothes weren’t what anyone would be looking at, anyway. There was Warner Bates from ARTnews, waving, pointing him out to someone else.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The book of Psalms is the oldest Christian hymn-book, inherited by the church from the ancient covenant. The appearance of the Messiah upon earth was the beginning of Christian poetry, and was greeted by the immortal songs of Mary, of Elizabeth, of Simeon, and of the heavenly host. Religion and poetry are married, therefore, in the gospel. In the Epistles traces also appear of primitive Christian songs, in rhythmical quotations which are not demonstrably taken from the Old Testament.1230 We know from the letter of the elder Pliny to Trajan, that the Christians, in the beginning of the second century, praised Christ as their God in songs; and from a later source, that there was a multitude of such songs.1231 Notwithstanding this, we have no complete religious song remaining from the period of persecution, except the song of Clement of Alexandria to the divine Logos—which, however, cannot be called a hymn, and was probably never intended for public use—the Morning Song1232 and the Evening Song1233 in the Apostolic Constitutions, especially the former, the so-called Gloria in Excelsis, which, as an expansion of the doxology of the heavenly hosts, still rings in all parts of the Christian world. Next in order comes the Te Deum, in its original Eastern form, or the kaq j eJkavsthn hJmevran, which is older than Ambrose. The Ter Sanctus, and several ancient liturgical prayers, also may be regarded as poems. For the hymn is, in fact, nothing else than a prayer in the festive garb of poetical inspiration, and the best liturgical prayers are poetical creations. Measure and rhyme are by no means essential. Upon these fruitful biblical and primitive Christian models arose the hymnology of the ancient catholic church, which forms the first stage in the history of hymnology, and upon which the mediaeval, and then the evangelical Protestant stage, with their several epochs, follow. § 114. The Poetry of the Oriental Church. Comp. the third volume of Daniel’s Thesaurus hymnologicus (the Greek section prepared by B. Vormbaum); the works of J. M. Neale, quoted sub § 113; an article on Greek Hymnology in the Christian Remembrancer, for April, 1859, London; also the liturgical works quoted § 98.